Women and the Election: Assessing the Impact of Gender Quotas
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Women and the election: Assessing the impact of gender quotas Buckley, F., Galligan, Y., & McGing, C. (2016). Women and the election: Assessing the impact of gender quotas. In M. Gallagher, & M. Marsh (Eds.), How Ireland Voted 2016: The election that nobody won (pp. 185-205). Palgrave Macmillan. https://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9783319408880#reviews Published in: How Ireland Voted 2016: The election that nobody won Document Version: Version created as part of publication process; publisher's layout; not normally made publicly available Queen's University Belfast - Research Portal: Link to publication record in Queen's University Belfast Research Portal Publisher rights Copyright 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s). This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. Please refer to any applicable terms of use of the publisher. General rights Copyright for the publications made accessible via the Queen's University Belfast Research Portal is retained by the author(s) and / or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing these publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. Take down policy The Research Portal is Queen's institutional repository that provides access to Queen's research output. Every effort has been made to ensure that content in the Research Portal does not infringe any person's rights, or applicable UK laws. If you discover content in the Research Portal that you believe breaches copyright or violates any law, please contact [email protected]. Download date:01. Oct. 2021 8 Women and the Election Fiona Buckley, Yvonne Galligan and Claire McGing In this chapter we analyse the impact of gender quotas on the selection and election of women in the 2016 general election. The chapter begins by reviewing the gendered recruitment and candidate selection plans of political parties as they implemented gender quotas. This is followed by a review of women’s candidate selection, identifying the challenges and controversies that emerged as parties set about reaching the 30 per cent gender quota. The election campaign is reviewed to identify the presence, if any, of a gendered dimension to campaign issues. Attention then turns to an examination of women’s electoral performance in the 2016 general election to assess the impact of gender quotas on the electoral prospects of women. The chapter concludes by assessing the current status of women in political decision-making in Ireland and profiling the women elected. Gender and candidate selection A constellation of pressures combined to facilitate the introduction of candidate gender quotas in 2012, notably demands for institutional change and political reform following the 2008 economic crashi. A draft bill was published in December 2011 by Minister Phil Hogan with the bill enacted in July 2012 with the support of all political parties. The Electoral (Amendment) (Political Funding) Act 2012 incentivises political parties to select at least 30 per cent female candidates and at least 30 per cent male candidates. Non-compliant parties surrender half of the state funding they receive on an annual basis to run their operations, a potential loss of millions of euros for larger parties. The gender quota threshold rises to 40 per cent from 2023 onwardsii. In anticipation of the impending introduction of gender quotas at the 2016 general election, many political parties used the opportunity of the 2014 local elections to recruit and run women candidates. However, wide variations existed in terms of female candidacy rates across the political parties providing an indication of the challenges that lay ahead for the roll out of gender quotas at the upcoming general election. Legislative gender quotas do not apply at the local level but parties such as Sinn Féin, Labour, the Green Party, People-Before- Profit and the Anti-Austerity Alliance actively recruited female candidates and came close to or exceeded the 30 per cent threshold. However, Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil failed to reach their self-imposed voluntary gender targets of 25 and 33 per cent respectively, running just 22.6 per cent and 17.1 per cent women candidates, Fianna Fáil was criticised by media commentators and party members alike for a perceived problem with women. In April 2014, then Fianna Fáil senator Averil Power wrote a hard-hitting piece in the Irish Times criticising the party leadership’s lack of commitment and progress in recruiting and supporting women’s candidacyiii. To counteract this perception and to prepare for the implementation of gender quotas at the 2016 general election, the party established the Markievicz Commission in July 2014. The Commission report, issued in January 2015, recommended that women candidates should be selected to contest half of the constituencies where the party had no incumbent TD and half of the constituencies where the party held one seat and wished to run a second candidateiv. The party’s national constituency committee reserved the right to direct constituencies to select women at selection conventions. Fine Gael established a national strategy committee in September 2014 chaired by Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald. The committee identified a number of constituencies where directives on the gender composition of the candidate ticket would be issued as well as others where women would be added to the ticket. The party also engaged the expertise of the consultancy firm Equality Strategy, which advised on gendered candidate recruitment and provided capacity training and mentoring for prospective women candidates. Facing a tough election, the Labour Party ran just one candidate in most constituencies it contested. In accordance with its constitution, where the party ran more than one candidate, gender balance appliedv. Similarly Sinn Féin undertook to run gender balanced ticketsvi, while other parties actively recruited women candidates to ensure they met the 30 per cent gender quota threshold. Implementing the gender quota: challenges and controversies With a reduced number of Dáil seats on offer (reduced from 166 to 158) and at least one incumbent TD in every constituency, many predicted that Fine Gael would face a greater challenge in implementing the gender quota than Fianna Fail. This certainly seemed to be the case in early selection conventions. In Dublin Bay North (DBN) in April 2015, four candidates contested the Fine Gael selection convention, two men and two women. A directive from Fine Gael headquarters stated that two candidates were to be selected, one woman and one man. It was widely anticipated that the sitting TD and Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation Richard Bruton would come through the selection convention with ease. However, it was Cllr Naoise O'Muiri and Stephanie Regan who were selected. Richard Bruton and the second female candidate Aoibhinn Tormey were not. Reports suggested disquiet among the constituency party over the gender quota; others claimed it was due to the number of candidates to be selected - some in the constituency wanted three candidates for geographical reasons. Whatever the case, it was widely accepted that the DBN selectorate had engaged in tactical voting to undermine the directive from Fine Gael party headquarters. Richard Bruton was quickly added to the ticket the following morning. The event was a cautionary reminder to Fine Gael headquarters that meeting the 30 per cent gender quota would need to be carefully managed. The party issued gender directives to four other constituencies - Dublin West, Dublin Rathdown, Kildare South and Longford-Westmeath. Similar to DBN, these directives were issued where a dual candidate strategy was planned – one woman, one man. In Kildare South, local party members chafed at the gender directive, describing it as being akin to North Korean-style rule. Ironically, at the time of the selection convention, Ireland and North Korea were jointly ranked in 86th position for women’s political representation. In total, Fine Gael selected 88 candidates including 27 women (30.7 per cent). This represents a 69 per cent increase on the number of women the party selected in 2011 (Table 8.1). Of the 27 women selected, 13 were selected at convention without a gender directive, five were selected via a gender directive and nine were added to the ticket (as were six men). The female add-ons were largely seen as an exercise ‘to balance the books’vii and meet the gender quota following the completion of selection conventions. From the outset many predicted that Fianna Fáil would have an easier experience in implementing the gender quota than Fine Gael. After all, it had many open constituencies (referred to as ‘green-field sites’) across the country with no incumbent TDs. However, selection patterns at the 2014 local election demonstrated the persistence of a masculinised culture within the party, with women’s political candidacy receiving minimal encouragement. Early selection conventions were relatively uneventful but as autumn 2015 approached and the prospects of an early election in November 2015 loomed, Fianna Fáil headquarters indicated, as specified in the Markievicz Commission report, that it would issue gender directives to meet the 30 per cent gender quota. In September 2015 Fianna Fáil headquarters issued directives to its members in the Dublin Central and Dublin South Central constituencies stipulating that a single candidate strategy and gender directive would apply. Prospective